Relaxation Tips

Submission for 2022-06-24 BOLLI Writer’s Guild Meeting
Prompt: What do you do to relax that is different from most people’s idea of
relaxation?

To relax and have fun, I like to contemplate how everyone else is better than me at relaxing and having fun.

After a day of juggling familiar “if only” excuses about work to avoid working, I like to transition to relaxing “home time,” where I travel down the comfortable channel of regrets in regard to my personal life.

Interacting with my children is a high point. I often enjoy short-circuiting efforts at stressful communication by telling my older child, “you should feel guilty.”

I have also transferred the mantle and burden of being the one who knows everything to my younger child. In exchange, I get the right to bestow official nicknames on our dog Chloe. It is very relaxing to play fetch with her, although she never brings the ball back, perhaps because she is confused by being called “Chloscapie,” “Chlodoronium,” or “Amy Klobachar.”

When I settle down to sleep at night, exhausted after a day full with the above important activities, my mind immediately leaps to the relaxing ritual of fretting about the world. When I realize my fruitless search for solutions to life’s problems will never let me get to sleep, I flip off my consciousness switch by attaching myself to my iPhone and listening to TV shows about the struggles of an autistic doctor or an unkempt homicide detective.

The highlight of my day is getting peacefully back to sleep during my many middle-of-the-night wakings by fantasizing about ending my turbulent wave-like existence by crashing and becoming one with the ocean.

With a little training, you too can follow these relaxation tips. Many more are available along with personal training, for a modest fee.

~ Scott Axelrod ~